Point, Set, Match and...Major Clog?

The world's oldest tennis tournament has once again come to an end. After two weeks of competition at Wimbledon the 2014 men's title went to Djokovic and the women's title went to Kvitová. It's an Eastern European party! In British Leicestershire people weren't too happy with how things were going it seems. Maybe that's why during the tournament hundreds of tennis balls were flushed into the drains around London! That must have been quite a job, because tennis balls float...you can't flush them that easily. Someone was clearly on a mission!

What is wrong now?

Engineers from Severn Trent Water were called the morning after the semi-final; the street was under water and the sewer was flooding due to an unknown blockage. That set the ball rolling, and it was soon discovered that hundreds of tennis balls were causing the trouble! "We are used to finding strange things blocking the sewer" said Severn Trent Water; "fat, nappies, leftovers, we've seen it all, but we've never experienced something like this before." Experts are still puzzled as to how or why anyone managed to flush so many tennis balls.

Good working sewer prevents trouble

In the meantime all the tennis balls have been removed and the sewer function restored. The incident makes us fully aware of the importance of a good working sewer and of good maintenance. It is simply a necessity, but one we don't consider it day to day. We all use the sewers daily, but we're only truly aware of these issues when our sewers don't do their job. When sewers get blocked, roads flood and a smelly gunk spreads in the streets. That's when the sewer really gets our full attention!

Rules of drain usage

A blockage like what occurred in Leicestershire doesn’t happen every day, but many strange objects have been found in the drains - items flushed thoughtlessly through sinks or toilets. Rules for proper drain usage are there for good reasons, hence the government's campaign to: “stop and think, not down the sink.”

Don’t flush things down the drain that don’t belong there: nappies, baby wipes, cooking oil or leftover paint simply do not belong in the sewer. Neither do medicines and other chemical substances. All this waste causes sewer blockage and unnecessary pollution of the groundwater, which is a danger and causes damage that can easily be prevented.